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PAUL A MODEL 



BACCALAUREATE DISCOURSE 



TO THE 



GRADUATING CLASS 



OF 



1860, 



AT 



DARTMOUTH COLLEGE, 



BY NATHAN LORD. 



PRESIDENT. 

ft., * 

$ HANOVER : 
PRINTED AT THE DARTMOUTH PRESS. 

I860. 



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DISCOURSE. 



1 COR. II : 2. 

for i determined not to know any thing among you 
save Jesus Christ and him crucified. 

A strong determination marks a strong man. It is an 
act of the will ; and the will is the exponent and factor 
of an anterior and ulterior affection. What a man 
loves he wills to be, to do, to pursue, to enjoy. There 
could be no willing but for this antecedent principle of 
love. But for this consequent willing there could be no 
subsequent act. The man acting is the man carrying 
out, voluntarily, his inwrought impelling love, be it good 
or bad. " Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth 
speaketh." The principle of love is vital and essential. 
It is known only to God. The actual which proceeds 
from it, is definable and measurable by the standards he 
has given us. Such is the simplicity of Scripture which 
we obscure by our speculations. 

A strong self-will proves a strong self-love. Hence 
an ambitious man, an avaricious, licentious, vindic- 
tive man, or the earnest speculatist, heresiarch, fa- 
natic, revolutionist, will be strong, each in his own 
way. By subtlety, chicane, or violence, he will seek to 
bend all things to his bad purpose ; and his passion, 



4 

growing by what it feeds on, will give him temporary 
influence and notoriety, as far as he can engage the sym- 
pathies, or pervert the judgments, of other minds. He 
will be injurious, or destructive, according to his abili- 
ties. The devil is almost infinitely powerful from his 
profound bad love, - that is, his hate to God, actuating 
his comprehensive intellect. What terrific resolve Mil- 
ton ascribes to him : — " Evil ! be thou my good." 

Divine grace in measure destroys the natural selfish 
love, and substitutes a new and Divine affection. This 
new Divine love is likely to be in proportion to the old 
selfish love. He who is capable of loving himself much, 
is also capable, when renewed, of loving Christ much. 
Thus it often happens that the men who are worst by 
nature, are best by grace. Paul, as a natural man, was 
the chief of sinners. But a new love made him just as 
remarkable a saint, - an earnest preacher of the faith 
which once he destroyed. 

Paul was a pattern man. His great love to Christ 
produced a strong will, and his strong will, Divinely de- 
termined, made him a great character. It wrought sin- 
gleness of purpose, attention, reflection, judgment, con- 
sistency, steadiness, patience, obedience, and an un- 
wavering confidence in God. An irresolute man would 
have failed in the very prospect of the labors, perils and 
sufferings which he encountered, as matters of course, 
and made nothing of for Christ's sake. His remark- 
able figure should be before every man who would live 
to any purpose in this world. It as much concerns this 
graduating Class, in their order, as it concerned the 



5 

Apostle in his order. Any man, of whatever calling or 
profession, is bound, as really as any other man, to be a 
Christian, and to put his Christianity before him as the 
guide of life. Christ crucified is set before the world al- 
ways that the secrets of all hearts may be revealed, and 
it will be our test in the day that hastens. All other ap- 
parent good, be it wit, genius, taste, learning, eloquence, 
place, fame, wealth, power, without Christ, will prove 
to have been not a real good, but an occasion of severer 
judgment. I preach to the Class now only in view of 
that future. Every thing else is insignificant in the 
comparison. 

Paul's strong determination gave him this remarkable 
peculiarity ; - he was decidedly both positive and nega- 
tive, not one-sided, dogmatic, obstinate, petulant, hate- 
ful, censorious, revengeful, but comprehensive, true, 
sincere, frank, generous and highminded. We are never 
at a loss to know what he believed, or what he did not 
believe ; what he would do, or what he would not do ; 
nor for what reasons. Christianity lifted him out of our 
common predicaments. Most men are either positive, or 
negative, or both these so mixed and confused as to neu- 
tralize each other. They affirm truth, but deny not er- 
ror ; or they deny error, but affirm not truth ; or they 
affirm and deny the same truth or error at the same time, 
or at different times, as occasions serve, and are incon- 
sistent. They reason now from one set of premises and 
then another and a different, so that a correct artificial 
logic draws them, of course, to different conclusions, and 
the resultant is a more dangerous falsehood. Paul was 



6 

never doubtful. He was positive of Christ, and nega- 
tive of whatever the natural man is prone to make a sub- 
stitute for him. The Romanists prefer Peter, and more 
suitably than they imagine ; for Peter both affirmed and 
denied his Lord, as they have always done, professing, 
in terms, the reality, but practically accepting only the 
sign of it. And there are many Protestant Peters who 
follow Christ till they meet with difficulties, and then 
forsake him, sometimes without weeping and repenting 
afterwards. Once scared, they are always shy of dan- 
gers, and flee, like hirelings, when they see a wolf. Or 
they are caught by a pleasant semblance or affectation. 
They make a school, an hypothesis, an interpretation, a 
criticism, an almsgiving, a Rabbi, equivalent to a living 
faith. Not so Paul. From the day that Ananias found 
him at Damascus, and gave the Lord's message to him, 
till the day of his death, he was true to Christ, and re- 
fused whatever concerned not his kingdom and glory. 
What things were gain to him he counted loss for Christ, 
that he might be found in him, having the righteousness 
of faith. There has never been such a perfect human 
model for young men. Let us observe it more particu- 
larly. 

Paul was evidently a man of uncommon abilities, large 
observation, and knowledge adequate to all the purposes 
of his calling. But he made no account of them, and 
never seemed to think of them. He was no egotist, 
never swelled, nor put himself forward. He affected 
nothing of parade or show. Of his worldly figure noth- 
ing is said in the sacred books except a hint or two that 



7 

he was not distinguished for personal beauty, elegant 
discourse, or courtly manners. It concerns me not to 
speak of him in these respects, even if there were more 
to be said ; but of his Christian excellence : - 

First, the groundwork ; viz., his faith. 

I call it a work, for it was the product of the Holy 
Spirit in his conversion ; -and groundwork, because faith 
is at the foundation of all true excellence. Whether the 
new love, of which I have spoken, precedes the work of 
faith, or is cotemporaneous with it, or what is their or- 
der, is of little consequence, except for curiosity. It is 
practically enough that love supposes an object which 
is Christ, and faith which works by love, makes Christ 
evident to the loving mind. It gives substance - both 
form and life- to his blessed image, and so awakens, di- 
rects and sustains the soul in its new voluntary activity. 
All there is in that loved object to stir the powers of the 
soul in any variety of study or labor, thenceforth produces 
its natural effect, according to the degree of faith. The 
loving man, like Paul, seeing and accepting Christ, as 
faith presents him, is fired with a holy zeal to serve him, 
and makes small account of difficulties and perils, or 
death itself, for his sake. It was faith that moved those 
old worthies, — the divines, physicians, lawyers, states- 
men, artizans, and others of their times, whom Paul de- 
scribes in the eleventh Chapter to the Hebrews, — that 
great cloud of witnesses which compasseth us about. No 
man, except perhaps an Apostle, needs it more than 
young men just going out from under teachers and gov- 
ernors into the confused and stormy world. If over and 



8 

above a liberal education, or good morals, or a high in- 
tellectual view of things, or a capacity for large attain- 
ments, or humane dispositions, or a sentimental interest 
in the physical happiness of men — a mere philanthro- 
py — or a romantic expectation of civilizing and reform- 
ing ungainly people, and giving a greater spring to the 
humanities of the world, -if over and above these I saw 
a Divine principle of faith, I should look for a legitimate 
and effectual use of these natural endowments. Other- 
wise, however they might serve some present political 
interests of society, they would be of no account in ref- 
erence to the true and ultimate ends of life, and would 
very possibly defeat them ; because no other foundation 
can any man lay than that is laid, which is Christ Jesus, 
and any substituted reliance is very apt, by reversing the 
order of Providence, to insure and aggravate a fatal issue. 
It is the Pharisaism of all times which, in the long run, 
is more injurious to individuals and society than the 
coarser forms of huma*n wickedness, and which Christ 
reproved more than any other vice of the human soul. 

But let us observe how it is that faith has this pre- 
eminence ; viz. because man's relations to God and to a 
spiritual world infinitely exceed the relations of his earth- 
ly state, and cannot be measured by them. It is be- 
cause our earthly relations have their chief importance 
from their bearing upon our state beyond the grave, and 
would otherwise be of scarcely any consequence at all. 
We might as well be Epicureans at once. If there be 
an end of us when we die, all we want is a little natural 
wisdom and prudence to look out for the few years that 



9 

are allotted to us here, and it might be questionable 
whether it were, on the whole, a benefit to live at all. 
How different are the facts. We have a conscious moral 
nature, accountable, immortal, and the present is merely 
a state of discipline and trial in reference to an endless 
life. Every man has a natural sense of this, and his sober 
reasonings confirm it. But the natural instincts, or rea- 
son, or conscience, cannot comprehend our vast relations. 
They could not if these relations were now as originally 
constituted by God. But they have been infinitely dis- 
turbed by sin. There is no end to the irregularities 
which now exist in the whole known system of the world. 
It is a broken-up world as to every man's own soul, and 
all the related creatures of God, and must be ordered and 
governed, and treated accordingly. It would be ruinous 
to apply to things actual abstract principles which be- 
long only to the possible or desirable. It would be like 
making or repairing a clock, or a steam engine, by the 
pure Mathematics. A more practical science is indispen- 
sable. Gabriel could not adjust the existing derange- 
ments of the earth and man. He could not change a this- 
tle into a rose, nor restore a soul, nor control the wrathful 
elements, nor put a hateful being into fellowship with his 
neighbor, nor reduce refractory subjects to the govern- 
ment of God. This is of God alone. What then could 
our perverted powers effect, in this regard, except to 
show us our need of supernatural enlightenment ? But a 
revelation of things above reason is addressed, of course, 
to faith, and faith, of necessity, is the only groundwork 
of true knowledge, wisdom, or virtue. It is the ground 



10 

work of Natural Religion, which is as really from God 
as Christianity itself, which he has in fact republished 
in Holy Scripture, to be received by us not as our poor 
faculties expound it, but in matter, manner and form as 
he reveals it. Natural Religion, however, is not the 
Gospel, nor like it, and therefore Paul merely asserted 
without discussing it. He had a higher mission, be- 
cause Natural Religion had been perverted by the false 
traditions of human wisdom, and all flesh had corrupted 
its way. Who ever lived up to Natural Religion as it 
is laid down in the Book of Proverbs ? Much mere the 
Ten Commandments, and the emblematical Gospel of 
Eden and Sinai had been buried up in the inglorious 
heaps of rabbinical philosophy. All the confusions of the 
world had increased as the world had grown old in sin. 
A new dispensation was necessary to convince the world 
of sin, and righteousness, and judgment ; to propound 
redemption through atoning blood, and regeneration by 
the Holy Ghost ; and give us access to a throne of mer- 
cy. Christ crucified for sin ; the crucified Christ send- 
ing forth his Spirit ; Christ convulsing the earth and 
its nations in relation to the ends of moral government ; 
Christ, in the fulness of time, regaining the government 
of the lost world ; Christ taking possession of the prom- 
ised kingdom ; Christ bringing his people with him in 
a glorious resurrection ; Christ exalted above all thrones, 
and dominions, and principalities, and powers ; Christ 
removing the curse from the broken-up earth and man, 
and introducing the whole groaning and travailing cre- 
ation into the glorious liberty of the sons of God ; - this 



11 

is the blessed Gospel revealed to faith. What could we 
otherwise have known beforehand, or by reference to 
any past experience, of these Divine realities ? Or what 
but faith could be a valid basis of true intelligence and 
virtue ? And so of all things whatever, for they hang- 
together from the throne of God. Those subjects which 
are peculiar to Christianity and distinctive of it, stand 
in such relation to all other things, that without it every 
thing is known only as it is disordered by the fall, and is 
very vanity. Christianity itself, without these elements, 
in their miraculous connexions and enforcements, is but 
a book, a name, or a mere ethical system of no more ac- 
count than the teachings of the natural sense or reason, 
requiring not faith, but speculation ; not an endowed 
ministry, but mere philosophers ; not churches, but acad- 
emies ; not a Holy Spirit to enlighten and renew the 
soul, but cultivated masters to excite its torpid energies, 
and a thrifty civilization to draw them out ; not a fel- 
lowship and communion of saints to preserve a healthful 
activity of the powers, but stimulants and narcotics to 
force them by the rivalries and competitions of a self- 
seeking world. Men are fallen, ignorant, perverse, proud, 
deceitful, hateful and hating one another, every where. 
They are so always. This is the fundamental fact of all 
the Revelations, - and we remain of this character, de- 
spite all other discipline, and possibly all the more for 
other discipline, but as taught, restored and justified by- 
Christ alone. The whole God-hating world is to be lift- 
ed out of its slough of sin and despair, and the tallest 
part of it with the greatest difficulty, as he himself af- 






12 

firms, only by him. What lever is strong enough for this 
but the cross ? Where shall we place its fulcrum but on 
the everlasting rock ? What instrumental power shall 
move it but the hand of faith ? Christ, therefore, was 
Paul's foundation, and he .determined to know inwardly, 
and to make known outwardly, nothing else. And but 
for a similar purpose we must fail, in the comprehensive 
sense of failure, of every thing, whether of the natural 
or the supernatural, of time or of eternity. cc No man 
cometh unto the Father but by me." "I am the way, 
and the truth, and the life." 

II. We observe now the substance of Paul's charac- 
ter, practically ; viz. his acting always agreeably to his 
faith. 

Here Paul should be suffered to explain himself, and 
other Scriptures also to speak for him, lest by our pri- 
vate interpretations, we fall, on the one hand, into the 
error of the Romanists, and make our duty to Christ to 
consist mainly in doing reverence to a crucifix ; or, on 
the other hand, the error of the speculative Protestant, 
who, pantheistically, sweeps all things that are related 
to Christianity, into it, as if they were integral parts of 
it, and virtually rates the human and Divine as identical, 
or, at least, equivalents. Our Protestant error is the 
more plausible and captivating to undiscerning minds, 
because it affects to magnify Christianity. But it is the 
more dangerous on that account, because it magnifies 
Christianity only by its human additions, which, in the 
long run, dishonor, in being suffered to overshadow, it. 



13 

We come to idolize our theories, to put the commentary 
above the text, and substitute for doctrine the com- 
mandments of men. To a sincere mind the specious fal- 
lacy is evident ; for things that are related to other 
things, are not included in them, and may be indefinite- 
ly different from them. Things in the natural world are 
related to things in the supernatural world, but form no 
part of them, and cannot be interpreters of them ; and 
even things natural, though related to each other, may 
be radically unlike. All things relate to Christ ; - the 
starry heavens ; the depths of the earth and of the sea ; 
all intelligences and their works ; all literature, art, sci- 
ence, philosophy, governments, laws, trade, commerce, 
manners and customs, whatever we include in civiliza- 
tion. They exist and are carried on in reference to the 
ends of moral government. Christianity, by its inciden- 
tal and collateral influence, makes and marks the differ- 
ence between one age and country and another. It is 
the common test of all things, and they rise or fall through 
their conformity or disagreement with it. But they are 
no part of it, nor like it. Christianity comes into the 
world because they are unlike it, and contrary to it, and 
need a restitution by it. When we commend and ad- 
vance them we do not necessarily commend and advance 
Christianity, and we may do it harm, just as it is in oth- 
er departments of the general system. Mathematics is 
related to agriculture, trade, the mechanic arts, the fine 
arts. But what should we say of the student or teacher 
of Mathematics, who should spend his time in discussing 
husbandry, or carpentry, poetry, music, or painting ? 



14 

What would he or his pupils know about the Mathemat- 
ics, or of these other branches, without having a mathe- 
matical foundation ? So the Christian is made so by 
Christianity, and Christianity is not art, or science, or 
philosophy. It intermeddles not with agriculture, trade, 
commerce, legislation, politics, but with individual men 
of all parties, pursuits and interests, to infuse into them 
its own proper spirit, on the basis of its own distinctive 
facts and principles, and combine their influence for the 
common good. Otherwise it reproves and denounces them . 
Its forces are centripetal and, of course, counteract our 
natural tendencies to eccentricity, confusion and destruc- 
tion. Christianity is for principles, not for modes and 
forms ; for the spirit, not for meats and drinks ; or for 
the outward and the natural, only as the new life of God 
affects them, and finds its way out practically through 
them. We go not to the cross to learn how to make 
houses, tools, books ; to plough, sow, or navigate ; to 
frame or administer governments ; - all which things are 
for the probation and discipline of our natural faculties ; 
but on what common basis, with what principles, in what 
spirit, and to what ends these natural works should be 
performed. Paul was, by trade, a tent-maker. Whether 
he made better tents after he was converted, history has 
not informed us. Very likely not ; for probably he then 
cared less for an earthly than a heavenly tabernacle. But 
he made them honestly, and became a more useful citi- 
zen, if not a more tasteful artizan, and, so far, gave a 
haalthier tone, if not a higher adornment to the civiliza- 
tion of his times. But if, in his intercourse with men, 



15 

he had discussed tent-making instead of Christ, or been 
ambitious to gain a patent for some new discovery, as 
doubtless he could have done, with his great abilities, 
what would have become of the souls of men ? How 
would the elect Gentiles have been gathered in ? Better 
tents might have made his converts more comfortable, or 
distinguished, or politically capable, but not better Chris- 
tians ; and what were better tents or palaces at the ex- 
pense or risk of Christian virtue ? Let earthly things, 
whether of intellect or skill, have their proper place ; 
but they are not the heavenly, and to make them 
virtually equivalent to the heavenly, or measures and 
expounders of it, is to bring heaven down to earth 
without a blessing with it. Many earthly things that 
were even right and lawful, Paul thought not ex- 
pedient ; and he was not a man to follow an abstract 
right, and much less an abstract notion, against the dic- 
tates of practical wisdom and benevolence, and to the 
greater disturbance of the present state of things. 

But let us understand him more aptly and precisely. 
Thus : -Paul rejects what the world calls the excellency 
of speech and of wisdom, and accepts what it calls fool- 
ishness. By wisdom he explains himself to mean what- 
ever views the natural mind takes of natural things, or 
of the things of the kingdom of God, in distinction from 
what God reveals of them by his word, and interprets to 
the believing mind by his Spirit. By excellency of 
speech he signifies the affected and artful discourse by 
which the rhetoricians set forth this vain natural wisdom 
to captivate undiscerning and light-headed people. And 



16 

he calls foolishness that which the natural man rejects as 
such, because it exceeds his faculties, and could not be 
discovered or comprehended by them. So the philoso - 
phers at Athens, -the wisest men of the earth, - mock- 
ed at him because he preached unto them Jesus and the 
resurrection. They affirmed that the resurrection was 
an impossibility. They had the laws of nature to 
back them, and were sure of their ground. Incontro- 
vertibly it was a natural impossibility. According to 
nature they were right, and they had a right to know and 
assert it. But it was not a supernatural impossibility, not 
absolutely impossible and absurd, as that an object should 
be in two different places at the same time, or that a tri- 
angle should be equal to a square. They had no right, 
on the basis of admitted facts, to set up theories that ig- 
nored, or controverted, or practically annulled ,' related 
facts that existed in a higher sphere, beyond their nat- 
ural comprehension, and revealed to faith alone. It was 
their fallacy and their sin, that what God said about 
these matters they simply rejected, or squared to their 
natural ideas; and they had no right to reason upon hy- 
potheses that left God out of the government of his 
own world, or that divorced his natural from his moral 
system. God who made man could certainly redeem 
him, and raise him from the dead. The Creator of the 
heavens and the earth could subvert them by flood or 
fire, and create new heavens and a new earth. What 
God says he has done, or will do, in these, respects, is 
the absolute of wisdom. That infinitely higher than 
Greek or Roman wisdom, Paul had reached, and was not 



17 

ashamed of it. If his adversaries were sure, as they had 
a right to be, from their stand-point, - for their logic 
from their partial premises was correct, - he was doubly 
sure from his higher postulates, and more comprehensive 
reasoning, and hence both his positive and negative re- 
solve. He could confidently affirm his own doctrine, and 
deny their one-sided philosophy, for it assumed to reason 
from a lower department of Providence against a higher 
altogether above reach and comprehension except as God 
should reveal it, and was consequently false. It left 
out the very primordial and vital element on which ev- 
ery thing depended - the living God. It could not then 
possibly be true, though it stood in the Areopagus. 

That higher department of God's universal sovereign- 
ty, for which all the inferior were made, and subsist, and 
have their orders and disorders, their actions and reac- 
tions, their destructions and new creations, till the ends 
of moral government are answered, revelation miracu- 
lously opens, substantiates, enforces, puts every thing 
below it, in proper relation and subserviency to it, and 
requires us to govern ourselves accordingly. Paul was 
not disobedient to the heavenly vision. His enlarged 
soul took in, in measure, the comprehensive scheme, 
worshipped the despised Nazarene who manifested to 
him such glories of the Divine government, and Christ 
became his guide. F^r above the most dignified school of 
his own nation, far above the wise men of the Areopagus, 
he rose in the dignity of his Christian manliness, reprov- 
ed their blind traditions, their gilded but shallow soph- 
istries, declared the unknown God, witnessed to Jesus 



18 
and the Resurrection, and gave fearful warning that God 
would no longer wink at the ignorance of foolish men, 
hut would hasten to judge the world in righteousness hy 
that man whom he had ordained, whereof he had given 
assurance unto all men, hy the resurrection of the dead. 
Great was the Revelation thenceforth to be the measure 
of wisdom, and Ihe rule of life to a deluded world. Paul 
had received it astonished, confounded, blinded, but sus- 
tained, recovered, emboldened, and he stood to it, though 
he had been exceedingly mad against it, through untold 
oppositions, perils and sufferings, to his dying day. He 
has ^i his record ; has set us an example ; has put it 
to the generations of scholars, and to all people to solve 
practically the problem which is now proposed to the 
world for its probation and trial, during the present 
Christian age ; viz. whether the natural or the supernat- 
ural, the wisdom of men or the wisdom of God shall be 
the guide of life. Great will be the controversy in these 
last days, and terrible will be the judgment of ungodly 
men 

It is, however, observable that Paul denounces not the 
natural, fallen, darkened, insufficient though it be, but on- 
ly rejects the universal human perversions of it, denies its 
practical sufficiency, and affirms Christ as the only true 
light that liiihteth every man that cometh into the world. 
Nature is great even in its fall and disorder ; great 
are its general laws, its relations, its causes and effects, 
its antecedents and consequents. For some uses and 
purposes of our natural life in this world, it is suf- 
ficient, upon a due and regulated observance ; that is, 



19 

for food, and drink, and raiment, for intellectual disci- 
pline, for political and social interests. But greater than 
nature or its laws is the God of nature, the lawgiver, the 
first, medial and final Cause ; greater is moral govern- 
ment ; greater, for the ends of moral government, are the 
suspension of general laws, the reversal of order, the dis- 
turbance of relations, overturnings and destructions in 
the great system of the world, till Christ shall have put 
all things under him. Great is the present state of 
things, to be studied in its facts and phenomena, their 
modes and laws, to be improved so far as we can im- 
prove it while the curse of sin remains upon it, and its 
frictions, jarrings, convulsions and deaths succeed each 
other in reference to the ends of a probationary state. 
That study is our appointed work, our trial and disci- 
pline, till probation shall end, and the symbolic day of 
judgment shall begin, and eternal issues shall be declar- 
ed. But if any man thinks to gain true science or vir- 
tue in any branch of natural knowledge, or depart- 
ment of natural affairs, without reference to their super- 
natural relations, or their concern with moral govern- 
ment, as set forth in Scripture, he will find, at length, 
that his partial judgment has misled him, and that he 
has built his house upon the sand. 

But to the right ordering of ourselves amidst the fric- 
tion and difficulties of this present state, we need to make 
a more experimental application of the life and lessons 
of our pattern man. This is important. Let us suppose 
then a hopeful young man, h recent Graduate, who has 
some incipient though yet imperfect faith, rather an edu- 



20 

cation;*] than thoroughly experimental faith in Christ, and 
proposes, as he leaves his College, to do what good he 
can, in his day and generation wherever Providence n: ay 
cast his lot. Suppose him, after a while, thrown into 
comparatively ignorant and irreligious society, say off 
among the new settlements; or what is still more in point 
of Paul's example, suppose him a teacher, preacher, 
physician, diplomatist, factor, in some parts of the une 
vangelized world, or among the apostate, effete Christian 
nations, or the dying-out Mohammedans of the east, 
where some of you, in all likelihood, will find your way. 
Or rather, suppose him back two thousand years, in some 
dissolute part of the Roman Empire, and then judge from 
the analogies or differences of the case. The panorama,- 
the whole scene that opens there - how different from 
these College scenes, how different from our own 
country round about, where the doctrines of the cross 
have, in some measure, refined and dignified society, 
where we have, as we think, and as may be true, the 
best part of the best race of earth, regular Anglo- 
Saxon blood coursing through our veins ; and may say, 
like as Paul said, "I am a Roman citizen. " It looks 
worse to him as he analyzes it in detail. He perceive 
arbitrary and despotic governments and a besotted peo- 
ple, no churches or schoolhouses, no comely homesteads, 
no mechanical improvements, no institutions of the arts 
and sciences, and though, physically, every prospect 
pleases, man is vile, abject and miserable. Suppose him 
now excited, affected, but not yet lifted above his edu- 
cational and popular ideas, to take up his argument as a 



21 

tn ere philosopher, or philanthropist, or negative Chris* 
tian, that these wretched people are not susceptible of 
the refined and elevating influences of Christianity in 
their present state. They must be washed, and cleansed, 
and civilized, must have more liberal governments, and 
equal laws, better education, a better husbandry, and a 
better economy in general, in order to the attainment of 
the true ends of life. Suppose our learned benefactor to 
lay out his strength according this humanitarian theory, 
and undertake a reform of society politically, education- 
ally, aesthetically ; suppose him, I mean, to follow his 
negative secular logic straight along, and to make his 
practice correspond to his finespun speculations. How 
would he come out ? In his zeal for a higher civiliza- 
tion, that is, for overturning, remodelling and recon- 
structing society according to his philosophical ideas, 
what would happen ? He would come up square against 
the universal prejudices and sympathies of the people, 
and provoke wonder, distrust, jealousy and opposition, 
not because of his Christianity, for by the supposition, he 
has not begun to play the Christian, not positive, like 
Paul, of Christ, but negative only of the real or suppos- 
ed antichrists. He would put himself before society as 
a hater and not a lover ; not a constructor, but a destroy- 
er ; and raise a storm against which his shining romance 
and onesided expedients would be as powerless as a zephyr 
against the sirocco. The learned men, such as there 
were, would take him to task for attacking their theories 
without proposing any that had adaptation to existing 
facts, or immediate practical necessities of society, or, at 



22 

least, that had any higher sanction than that of a merely 
speculative wisdom. The idolaters would assail him for 
spurning their mythologies before the introduction of a 
more credible and authoritative religion ; and the govern- 
ments for sowing discord and sedition, upturning inveter- 
ate customs or institutions which, however imperfect, 
were yet better than general anarchy, and possibly neces- 
sary, in the existing state of things, to prevent general 
dissolution. Would not our excellent reformer find to his 
cost that he had begun at the wrong end ? Before he had 
projected Christ, -" the way, and the truth, and the 
life," - he would be banished or beheaded. C?esar would 
be too hard for him while he withheld the tribute-mon- 
ey, and assumed virtually to legislate over, or to over- 
throw " the powers that be," ordained of God, and 
necessary as the granite ridges t) hold the world to- 
gether. 

But did not Paul and all the Apostles encounter diffi- 
culties in proclaiming Christ and him crucified alone ? 
Certainly they did, and in similar circumstances others 
would be likely to do the same, to an extent, in 
every period. But there is this vast difference. They 
began and continued with Christ, were positive of him, 
and nothing else, and let human expedients alone. They 
found nature sick, deranged, and went to their work not 
empirically with drenching and violence, and not dream- 
ily with homoepathic specifics, that are practically mere 
amusements and are nothing, but scientifically, like the 
great physician — -the loving, generous, disinterested, 
all-comprehending Christ, — not to destroy, like Peter, 



23 

whom our Lord reproved for bis intemperate and vindic- 
tive zeal, but to save ; to restore by converting ; to re- 
form by sanctifying ; to make the tree good that its fruit 
might be good. That is the difference. And what was 
the consequence ? Not that they did not suffer ; but it 
was for Christ's sake and not their own mistakes ; for 
sound principles, and not for a shallow policy. So they 
glorified God and dishonored, not themselves in the fire. 
Some of them the fire could not burn, nor the lions de- 
vour, as those remarkable young men, long before, ^n 
the court of Babylon, young students possibly, just out 
of some Jewish College, or school of the Prophets, taught 
first and last the relation of all things to the moral gov- 
ernment of God. And what was another consequence ? 
They sowed the seeds of grace over the deserts of the 
world, and that precise effect which God designed by 
Christianity was accomplished in the ingathering of a 
peculiar people out of all the commercial world, and 
whatever blessing has come to the distressed nations of 
the earth, since the ascension of our Lord. There was 
the greatest fruit of grace where there had been the 
greatest want of it, and it will remain, amidst the dis- 
cordant, wicked civilizations of the world, 

" Till o'er our ransomed natu.-e, 
The Lamb for sinners slain, 
Redeemer, King, Creator, 
Returns in bliss to reign." 

But once more ; - let us suppose that the Christian 
part of the world, captivated by worldly ideas of a per- 
fect state, and in accordance with any world- theory of 
setting up the kingdom of God upon the earth, should 



24 

be able, by some magnetic power, yet unknown, to over- 
turn, in a day, the abuses of ages, and introduce, a} 
once, a type of civilization more refined than had ever 
before existed on the earth, answerable, for example, to 
Utopia, or a Platonic commonwealth. But, by the sup- 
position, Christ is not yet there, nor Revelation to guide 
the excited minds of men, nor Holy Spirit to convert 
them. All that is to be on the next stage of progress to 
perfection. We have gotten our handmaid to Chris- 
tianity, — wisdom, and excellent speech, wealth, re- 
finement, political power, and a state of universal free- 
dom. What help will our handmaid afford us towards 
the settlement of a perfect state ? Let Paul him- 
self answer experimentally and historically in view of all 
that had happened on the earth up to his time, or would 
be likely, according to the laws of fallen mind, to hap- 
pen in all times. He will advise us that when men, 
without Christian virtue, have become wise, knowledge 
has puffed them up ; or mighty, their wealth and power 
have made them self-reliant, independent, and overbear- 
ing ; or noble, their fictitious grandeur has eclipsed the 
unpretending lights of humble merit, and made them 
contemptuous of wiser and better though less ostentatious 
men ; and that when they have had the liberty which 
they valued above all things, they have turned it into 
licentiousness, and their precious fruit has become rot- 
ten before it co;dd become ripe. Paul will convince us 
that Christ came into this world for judgment, that they 
who see not might see, and that they who see might be 
made blind ; and that in the ingathering of his chosen, 



25 

he has made very little account of these imaginary, sec- 
ular preliminaries of salvation, but, contrarily, ' has 
chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the 
wise, and weak things of the world to confound the 
things that are mighty, and base things of the world, 
and things that are despised, yea, and things that 
are not, to bring to nought things that are, tha 
flesh might glory in his presence.' We shall learn from 
Scripture that to the poor the Gospel is preached ; that 
the beatitudes are all referable to states of mind and 
habits of life wholly opposed to the spirit of the world ; 
that Lazarus is in Abraham's bosom, and Dives lifting 
up his eyes in torment ; that the publicans and harlots 
enter into the kingdom of heaven before the Scribes and 
Pharisees ; and that, although God, in his great mercy, 
has saved some of all classes of mankind, yet the tallest 
and most highly civilized have had a probation propor- 
tioned to their privileges, and have been saved with the 
greatest difficulty, as if by fire, or as if a camel should 
go through the eye of a needle. All Scripture and ex- 
perience will assure us that the greater our natural ele- 
vatiou the more likely we are to be giddy and to fall ; 
that our dangers are proportioned to our blessings ; and 
that if any man will be saved he must take up his cross 
and follow Christ, just as Christ learned obedience by 
the things that he suffered. We learn out of our infal- 
lible directory, that if men have every thing else without 
Christ they are worse than nothing, and were better 
drowned in the sea ; that all reform that is really such 

works out from Christ, and not in towards him ; that all 
4 



26 

true prosperity begins with Christ, and that there is no 
good whatever that does not otherwise ensue to a great- 
er evil ; for moral government will have its course and 
issue, though the universe take up with any contrary 
theory, or affect practically to reverse the eternal plan. 
All such affectation our Lord most significantly reproves 
as the putting of new wine into old bottles, or new cloth 
into an old garment : the bottles are burst, and the rent 
is made worse. This is a slow lesson and a hard one ; 
but it has high authority, as well in experience as in 
Scripture. Or, just to vary the effect of these observa- 
tion* ; -it is as if our pleasant valley, or the prairies of 
the west, or the deltas of the south, or of Egypt, 
or all the glorions east, were covered with sumptuous 
dwellings surrounded with Eden-like parterres, the 
dwellers all as by a magic touch made healthy, strong, 
and beautiful, enriched by more than Athenian litera- 
ture, art, science and philosophy, the governments con- 
stituted after the highest models imaginable on earth • 
in a word, physically and intellectually as God pronounc- 
ed his original creation - very good, - wanting nothing 
but that original innocence and purity from which Adam 
by transgression fell. But they are fallen and sinful 
still, and the cherubim and flaming sword still keep the 
way of the tree of life. What, in thirty years, for aught 
that naturalism could effect, would become of all that 
wealth, learning, freedom, beauty, and magnificence ? 
If Adam fell in the Paradise which God created, what 
would become of his selfish children in such a paradise 
as they could manufacture on their own account ? Do 



27 
I need to ask of those who have read their Bibles, and 
had a sound conviction of their own depravity, or prac- 
tical acquaintance with the selfishness and wickedness 
of the world ? There will be a day, — God's name be 
praised, — when the whole accursed wilderness of earth 
shall be as Eden, and the desert as the garden of the 
Lord ; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanks- 
giving and the voice of melody. But this will be the 
consequence of Christ's investiture with his promised 
kingdom, when they shall bring the glory and honor of 
the nations into it. Then we shall have not the mere 
dream of a perfect state — paradise regained by our 
speculative wisdom, our mechanical expedients, our con- 
fident and frothy declamations, our might and power, 
which have always disappointed men and nations when 
they have awaked to the complications, coufusions, and 
strifes of a sin-cursed world ; but the glorious vision of 
faith, - the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven, 
prepared as a bride adorned for her husband, and the 
angel shall proclaim through the midst of heaven, - 
" Now the kingdoms of this world have become the king- 
doms of our Lord and of his Christ." God be thanked 
for that assurance by which we cheerfully and earnestly 
toil and struggle on, in Christian hope, for such im- 
provement as is possible of the present state of things. 

In confirmation of the views above expressed, it is 
sufficient to remark in closing, that well instructed and 
experienced Christian men, when Paul is brought dis- 
tinctly before them, join with him in referring his char- 
acter to the supernatural grace of God which made him 



28 
what he was, and assert the same cause as alone sufficient 
to produce a like effect in others. For every Christian well 
remembers that he became a Christian, not by intellec- 
tual discipline, or ceremonial observances ; not by the 
outside reformation of his morals, or his manners ; and 
not by any merely onesided, negative virtue in renounc- 
ing, denouncing, or opposing evil. All that labor and 
travail only plunged him into lower depths. He studied, 
reformed and toiled, struggled and fought in vain. De- 
spite all his attempts to restore his soul, every thing 
went wrong and worse with him, till God's mercy tri- 
umphed, and Christ was formed in him the hope of glory. 
' Then only did he begin to live anew, and use his powers 
aright, when he felt the constraining influence of a Sav- 
ior's love. I have seen this nowhere more than among 
young men and students. What is true of one is true 
essentially of all, any where, at any time, among any 
people, - pagan, Jewish, Mohammedan, or Christian, in 
any age, on a great scale or on a small, with a family, a 
college, a nation, the world, as with an individual soul ; 
for ' as in water face answereth to face, so the heart of 
man to man.' Nay, a family, a college, a nation, the 
world, can be brought back to God only as one by one 
the individuals who compose it receive Christ by a liv- 
ing faith. Otherwise we accumulate our spiritual diffi- 
culties, and confirm our habits if not of outward wicked- 
ness, yet of more refined and dangerous selfishness, and 
aggravate our guilt, as our Lord emphatically taught 
the self-justifying classes of his day. But with Christ 
God freely gives us all things. Then, what our forms 



29 

and reforms, mechanisms and expedients, policy or pow- 
er, could not otherwise effect, is done. Then the idols 
fall ; nature revives ; man wakes from his sleep of death • 
God's ordinances are set up in strength and majesty ; 
knowledge, wisdom and virtue rule the affairs of men. 
Pride, envy, jealousy, malice, deceit, injustice, oppress- 
ion, cruelty, chicane, intrigue, violence, and crime, give 
place to the heavenly influence, and God in very deed 
dwells with men upon the earth. God and not man 
made the world. God governs the world. God and not 
man must save it. He will not give his glory to another. 

Young Gentlemen of the Graduating Class : 

As ever before, and always as I have opportunity 
while I live to reach you by discourse, so now, on this 
last Sabbath together in this house of God, I would seek 
to refresh your minds with what seem to me the truths 
of this Holy Book. I would excite, and guide and sus- 
tain you by the eminent example of one who was deter- 
mined to know them and nothing else. Now, let me 
kindly ask you, - for I seek your good, - what want you ? 
What do you propose to yourselves as you leave these 
halls? The greatness of this world ? It is a sham, a 
bubble. Though you gain it, you gain the false at the 
sacrifice of the true. Be humble, then, with Paul, and 
real greatness will ensue, not that which so many seek 
as the end of life, but that which is an ordained conse- 
quence of seeking life's great end. Before such honor 
is humility. Do you affect the wisdom of the world ? 
But remember that the " wisdom of this world is foolish- 



30 

ness with God." " The Lord knoweth the thoughts of 
the wise, that they are vain." Be fools with Paul, and 
your vessels, then emptied of conceits and vanities, will 
be filled with the treasures of heavenly knowledge. Do 
you affect the power of the world 1 How soon is the 
staff broken, and lies rotten in the dust. Or while you 
use it for the ends of earth, it reacts and strikes you down. 
" I have seen the wicked in great power and spreading 
himself like a green bay-tree. But he passed away and 
lo, he was not ; I sought him, but he could not be 
found." Be weak with Paul, and God shall clothe 
you with a never-dying or relaxing strength. One 
of you shall chase a thousand, and two put ten thou- 
sand to flight. Do you affect happiness — that de- 
lusive end which a spurious morality and a secu- 
lar theology so much in our day exalt ? But remem- 
ber that your happiness is of infinitely less consequence 
than the honor of your Creator, and that he holds what 
man esteems the well-being of worlds as of no account 
in comparison with the ends of his holy government ; 
aud that they who laugh now shall mourn and weep. 
Suffer with Paul ; for " tribulation worketh patience ; 
and patience, experience ; and experience, hope ; and 
hope maketh not ashamed. " Or do you affect life ? But he 
that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life 
for Christ's sake shall keep it unto life eternal. Die 
daily with Paul, and be partakers also of a better res- 
urrection. What more, what better, what else, speaking 
after a Christian fashion, can I say ? Do you want all 
things ? Be Christ's, and all things are yours — Paul, 



31 

Apollos, Cephas, — you may appropriate essentially all 
their gifts. The world, or life, or death, or things pres- 
ent, or things to come, all are yours, and ye are Christ's, 
and Christ is God's. " Who shall separate us from the 
love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or perse- 
cution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword ? 
Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors 
through him that loved us. For I am persuaded that 
neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, 
nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor 
height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able 
to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ 
Jesus our Lord." 

c< Now I commend you to God and to the word of his 
grace which is able to keep you from falling, and to 
give you an inheritance among them that are sancti- 
fied by faith." 















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